There are rises, and there are meteoric rises. Paul Kitcatt, 38, joined
the direct marketing agency, Brann, as a trainee copywriter in 1989.
Three-and-a-half years later, Kitcatt, who was once a bookseller, and
then a teacher, became an executive creative director. He was also a
member of the management buyout team that purchased the agency at the
beginning of last year.
Kitcatt has worked on various financial, charity, fmcg, automotive and
leisure accounts. He now runs a 55-strong creative department, where the
pool of skills is wide enough to offer clients both loyalty and image-
enhancing work.
In order of creative billings, Brann’s clients are: Colonial Direct,
Peugeot, DHL, Guinness and the RSPCA. In terms of total agency billings,
the list reads: Zurich Municipal, Microsoft, Touch Line, Barclays and
Colonial Direct. The difference is explained by the fact that Brann
earns revenue from telemarketing, data analysis and research, as well as
creative services.
The agency’s direct mail work for the Salvation Army led to the radio
and press ads, inserts and a TV ad which Kitcatt calls ‘the mailing
brought to life’.
The TV work for the launch of Colonial Direct was part of a fully
integrated campaign to develop the company’s corporate identity, right
down to its business cards. The creative treatment used a Windows-type
computer graphic to target financially sophisticated and technologically
friendly people.
The Guinness promotion for its lager brand, Enigma, appeared both as a
mailing and an insert, and drew heavily on the Salvador Dali imagery of
the TV ad through Publicis. ‘We saw the TV storyboard about three months
before it went on air,’ Kitcatt says.
Brann works for DHL on a raft of communications issues - not press or
TV, but almost all printed media, and now interactive media too. The
disk shown here was used to replace a complex, printed tariff guide.
Kitcatt sums up the agency’s approach: ‘No one medium takes precedence
here, understanding the customer is the key.’
